Spirits and Revelations
by CelestiaLily
Summary: Aang and his daemon reflect on the discovery of Zuko's secret, along with a few others to be told. Revision of "The Blue Spirit." No pairings/general, Aang/Zuko friendship. Oneshot, complete. Enjoy!


**Disclaimer: I do not own _Avatar: The Last Airbender _or the _His Dark Materials _trilogy. These belong to Mike and Bryan and Phillip Pullman respectively.**

A/N: This is my version of events from "The Blue Spirit." The character's dæmons include:

Aang: Loatyrica. (Low-TEAR-i-ka.) Nickname: Loa. (Low.)

Zuko: Sanzyro. (San-ZY-row.) Nickname: San.

Uncle Iroh: Rhylanor. (RYE-lan-or.)

Enjoy!

**~ The Forest ~**

_Aang/Loatyrica POV_

"I had always thought she had- you know,- settled..."

He didn't know what to think.

Granted, it would've been easy to simply ignore the question in their current situation. They had just been running from Zhao's men into the dense forest, dragging a limp body away from the heavily-guarded fortress where they had been cruelly imprisoned for about most of the evening. One doesn't go through that sort of ordeal fully rested, now do they?

But Aang felt it deserved to be addressed, even though for the life of him he couldn't come up with any suitable explanation.

For the longest time he and Loa had always assumed that Zuko's dæmon was the form of a vicious two-headed rat-snake, sporting black and red scales and an ill temper to boot. Aang, Katara and Sokka have been fighting with the pair for a while now and she had never shown any signs of changing. Even when Loa had pounced on her in the village of Kyoshi as a snarling wildcat she had kept fighting in the same form. It was almost sad to see a dæmon so repulsive and bitter, but having Zuko on their trail pushed all thoughts of pity out of their minds.

In the short span of a terrifying half an hour, that had all changed. Those recent events disturbed Aang more than he was willing to admit to himself.

Loa shuddered instinctively, her panther muscles rippling subtly under the sinuous jet black coat. Aang quietly scooted over to her spot under the aspen tree and wrapped his tired arms around her furry body. Her trembling eventually stopped; she changed into a hummingbird and perched on his outstretched hand. They lay there together, without speaking under the rustling canopy of trees glowing in the twilight air.

Aang felt Loa suddenly stiffen, although they weren't in any immediate danger as far as he could tell in the serene forest. He followed the direction of her gaze to the unconscious forms lying only a few feet away, along with a discarded blue mask and two sheathed broadswords.

"When we first saw him..." Loa began, shifting into a Wing Cat and preening her long feathers to calm herself down. Aang turned his head and stared at her glittering gray eyes, "I was scared we had actually _seen _a spirit. 'Cause-"

"Yeah, 'cause I couldn't see her at all." Aang's recent trip to the Spirit World had been exciting in more ways than one; he had learned that dæmons couldn't exist there (much to the fascination of Loatyrica,) and that only a true spirit would have no dæmon if they crossed into the real world.

**~ Flashback ~**

They had been chained up together in that dark and lonely cell for some time, a puddle of Loa's blood pooling on the floor from some arrows that had nicked her shoulder blade during the chase. It was agony unlike any other for Aang; experiencing the pain as his own and not being able to comfort her because of their chains kept at a cruelly short length. No amount of shifting broke her free from the thick metal, and so they had to wait. Aang was beginning to despair in the low-lighted chamber, when suddenly the masked person came and sliced off their restraints with no warning at all. Loa was afraid to trust him when they saw no dæmon at his side, and she urged him to run away before something terrible happened. But Aang knew they didn't have any other choice if they wanted freedom from Zhao's heavily-guarded fortress. She quickly nipped at a few half-frozen frogs as Aang was dragged away. They would have to do what he said.

The mysterious figure had fought well for someone without a dæmon or bending; managing to fight at the same ferocity as Aang with only his twin broadswords and his wits. He had kept well away from Loatyrica all during the battle, but knew how to work along side her and Aang without breaking the taboo. Aang was confused why he did this, even if he was a spirit. Loa was a raging flurry of claws and talons and fangs and feathers, snarling at the soldiers' wolf dæmons and shifting too quickly for any of them to properly attack her. Blow after blow was dealt to Zhao's men; Aang barely able to keep up as his senses went into overdrive.

Against all odds, they were quickly gaining ground with little effort or damage on their part. _We're almost there, we're almost out! _Loa cried in Aang's mind, and he agreed. They were winning.

But when a single clever firebender took advantage of their flammable poles, and they had to jump prematurely or risk being roasted alive, Aang suddenly felt their luck run out as they plummeted to the ground. The 3 fighters were stuck; cornered, outnumbered and exhausted with no options left but surrendering to Zhao. This option became more and more appealing as their chance of escape dwindled before their eyes.

All this time Aang had thought the Blue Spirit would fight bravely beside them, and surrender their defeat if necessary. He was mysterious and very skilled with weaponry, but the thought of manipulation never crossed their mind. That delusion had collapsed in an instant.

The Blue Spirit suddenly swung out his swords- too quickly to anticipate- and in a swift motion crossed them around Loa's eagle neck, lethally pinning her before anyone moved a muscle. Loatyrica squawked in terror; perching on Aang's trembling shoulder as the dangerous figure stared through his fearsome mask at Admiral Zhao. Loa understood the bargain that was made at once; the Blue Spirit dared Zhao to risk losing her and the almighty Avatar to catch a lowly thief. Her life hung dreadfully in the balance.

Aang felt close to vomiting. _No one _had ever come so close to killing his dæmon as this person was, this person whom had rescued them. They slowly walked through the gates, Aang sensing Loa's terror and fear as potently as his own.

It looked like they was well away from Zhao and his army, far enough to try and overpower him; but then in a sour twist of fate the arrow struck home and Aang turned to see the fallen figure thudding to the ground, knocked out instantly on impact. Neither of them could decide what to do next. _Run or stay? Run or stay? _Aang made his choice by removing the mask, only to recoil in surprise at the familiar scarred face within. _But how... _Aang caught a glimpse of Fire Nation troops rapidly approaching them.

He turned back sharply when Loa batted his leg to point at the shocking sight of the tiniest mouse he ever saw; battered and bruised, curled up on the ground beside Zuko's sword hilt.

In the next instant Aang bent up a cloud of swirling dust for cover, tossed Zuko on his back and lugged him out of danger as fast as a frightened 12 year old could. At the same time Loatyrica shifted into a panther, picked up the broken mouse by the scruff of its tiny neck and bounded after Aang.

They didn't stop running until their pounding hearts slowed and no ominous footsteps could be heard thundering through the forest.

As soon as Aang's heavy load was abandoned at the foot of a tree, he sank down in exhaustion and cuddled up next to Loatyrica, who had gently placed Zuko's unknown dæmon at the teenager's head.

**~ End Flashback ~**

"... I see. She was curled up in his pocket the whole time." Loa finally addressed Aang's unvoiced revelation. "No wonder she's hurt like that then, we all took some pretty hard knocks back there." This was certainly true; Loatyrica's mild shoulder wound had stopped bleeding, but they both felt weary from the vigorous fighting.

Aang suddenly remembered his friends' predicament. "We should hurry up and take the frogs to Katara and Sokka. Who knows what kind of condition they're in?" Loa ignored Aang's worried statement save for a mild flick of an ear.

"Loa, I said we need to go back. Come on." She further ignored him and continue to stare at Zuko and his dæmon unflinchingly. Aang felt annoyed that she was being this unreasonable.

The stress of their situation finally snapped something in him. He began to raise his voice,

"Look, Sokka and Katara are sick. We've got the cure right _here,_" Aang held up a small cold frog that hadn't thawed out yet, "and you're just wasting time sitting around! I'm sure Zuko's just _fine_ right now, considering he nearly _killed _you back there! Do you know how frightenedI was? You- you almost _died!_ I don't even know why we saved him, if just twenty minutes ago he bargained our lives to get away from Zhao!"

Silence. Aang found himself breathing quite heavily again, despite gulping in lungfuls of cool night air. Then, "He still saved us." Loatyrica remarked. _That's not good enough! _Aang thought bitterly.

He angrily pushed himself up onto his feet and briskly walked away; determined to climb back to the ruins where his sick friends lay, their fate currently unknown to the 12 year old boy. But Loatyrica had firmly rooted herself where she was, and as he stepped further and further away a growing pain in his chest started to build.

He faltered, and turned back to see Loa digging her little Wing Cat claws into the tree's thick roots to prevent herself from following. Their gray eyes met and exchanged each others' lingering pain. Aang dropped his gaze and continued to pull, but didn't get far until the hurt became almost unbearable. He felt Loa's silent desperation in his mind, pleading for him to stop the aching torment. He wanted to help his friends, but she wouldn't come and it was hurting both of them to pull apart from one another. She let out a single shuddering gasp.

"Loa, please-" Then he was scrambling towards her, tripping on the bumpy roots and clamoring over to his dæmon, who sprang into his arms and flapped her pale wings in relief. It was _awful _to have that sick feeling in your heart; that deep absence that was near impossible to ignore. It wasn't just _your _pain you felt, it was your dæmon's too. Aang stroked Loatyrica's soft fur over and over again until both of them were healed from the trauma.

When they had calmed down enough to speak Aang asked imploringly, "But why? Why would Zuko save us like that...?"

Loa paused. "I- I don't know. I mean, he's not exactly on the good side if he's been chasing us around the world. But she changed, didn't she? She became a mouse and hid in his pocket so Zhao's men would think he was a _real_ spirit. Clever..."

"Yeah," Aang replied absentmindedly, "but... Loa, when do dæmons usually settle? It's always been when they grow up, don't they?" She nodded. He continued on, "It happens anytime, but isn't there a point where _everyone's _dæmon should've settled? I thought the oldest you could get was 15 or something. Kuzon's stopped shifting at 8 or 9 I think, but he was still the same person as he always was. Just a little more grown up."

Aang chuckled softly. "Still, that didn't stop him from putting the blame on me whenever we got caught by all his pompous teachers. Man, that old mathematics professor was the _worst! _Remember when I had to hold onto your beak one time to prevent you from laughing at Kuzon's faces he was making at the old geezer? You almost fell right over, and then I had to bail us out real quick when Kuzon said it was _us_ who put the fly-beetles in his dumplings!" Loatyrica's laughter at the amusing memory rang clear through the forest.

They swapped stories for a while, alternately giggling and adding in the hilarious details along the way. Kuzon, Bumi and Aang had been quite the scheming trio in their youth; it was funny yet bittersweet to recall such memories about Bumi; now so much different than before, and Kuzon, who Aang sadly assumed had passed away.

A lull in the conversation soon came, and Aang glanced back to recall the reason he had started talking in the first place.

"If... if people's dæmons are supposed to settle when they grow up, then why hasn't Zuko's stopped changing yet...?"

Loatyrica shifted to a floppy eared cat before answering, "Remember when Monk Gyatso told us why the settling time wasn't the same for everyone?" He nodded. "... well, he said that becoming older doesn't mean it'll happen just like that; you need to feel- what was it- okay with who you are, in order to grow up. Like being comfortable in your own skin."

"Comfortable in your own skin..." Aang murmured. Realization dawned on him. "Is... is that why Zuko's dæmon hasn't settled yet? 'Cause they're not comfortable with themselves, in their own skin?"

"I would think so..." She said. "Hey... um-" Loa broke off suddenly, staring at the forest ground and looking ashamed at her thoughts. "It's fine, you can ask me." Aang reassured her. "Well, uh- do you ever wonder how Zuko got that scar of his?"

That caught Aang off guard. For the first time since the 2 boys met Aang turned around and took a good long look at the fiery wound permanently scarred on the teenager's left side of his face. "It's a burn scar..." _But, he's the prince of the Fire Nation... Why would a royal heir have such a disfiguring wound? _

"It almost looks like a firebender's work, if you ask me." Loatyrica said. "You don't get those kinds of scars from playing too near a hot stove."

"Can't be. Must've been a training accident or something." Aang muttered dismissively.

"Still doesn't explain why she hasn't settled yet..."

"Look, why do you keep defending them?" He confronted her with an edgy tone growing again in his voice; fully expecting another fight, but not caring in the least. It didn't make much sense for Loa to be sympathetic towards a crazy firebender with anger issues, let alone their _enemy_ who hadn't shown the traveling group a single ounce of kindness or even letting up his tiresome brigade until that very day. What Aang _didn't_ expect was Loa's calm and straightforward answer:

"Because I think they can still change."

Silence. Aang slowly took this information in, not so willing anymore to get into another fight with Loa over this. What mattered now was his friends. Even she agreed it was time to go.

But at this moment in time, between late evening and early dusk the forest was eerily silent. The diurnal animals were slinking back into their dens, and the nocturnal creatures hadn't started prowling around into the night. In this time it was rather easy to hear the tiniest movement coming from anywhere, simply because of the lack of activity in the forest. And so this is why when the mouse-that-was-not-a-mouse stirred ever so slightly on the rocky ground below, Loa's hypersensitive ears were able to detect it immediately.

She rested a paw on Aang's crossed leg; pricked up her ears and turned to the cause of the miniscule sound. _"Is that what I think...- yeah..." _they communicated.

Aang became very still as Loatyrica morphed into a tiny speckled gray mouse and padded towards the awakening dæmon. His eyes fervently flitted between her silent form and Zuko's unconscious body laying less than 4 feet away from Loa. _He_ hadn't shown any signs of waking up yet, so why was his dæmon?

When Loa's quivering whiskers were almost nose-to-nose with hers, Aang held his breath as the dæmon blearily opened her golden eyes and peered into the glistening gray pair of her own.

Loa's words were so soft; like peach blossoms on the wind, that Aang felt them more in his mind than he heard them spoken aloud.

"... Are you- are you Zuko's dæmon...?" The injured mouse nodded as best as she could.

Aang saw Loatyrica softly smile in a friendly, mysterious way. _What is she doing...?_

"My name's Loatyrica... what's yours?"

Aang was shocked and astounded, to say the very least. With his dæmon almost awake, it was only be a matter of time before the blazin' _prince of the Fire Nation_ woke up and started- _"Shooting at us? Saving us? I don't know!" _It was all Aang could do to notstand up that instant and _pull _Loa after him for doing that. He could hear her calming words in his head, telling him it's okay and to wait before doing anything rash.

"_Rash? _You're _being rash!" "... Just wait, Aang. I've got this, you'll see."_

Unbelievably; despite her severely weakened state, the golden-eyed mouse murmured a reply.

"... San... Sanzyro..."

Loatyrica swiveled around her little rodent neck and exchange a look with Aang._"They can still change..." _He finally grasped the meaning behind those words. Both of them were so enthralled in the quiet learning of Sanzyro's name that neither of them noticed a slight change in the forest atmosphere.

_Zuko/Sanzyro POV_

A miniscule crack. Light slowly bloomed on his retinas in hazy slits; piercing the darkness of his previous unconscious state, but offering little consolation as his senses struggled to right themselves.

_Ugh, wha- wha-appened...?_

A dull ache on the side of his head was pounding away at his skull _(it was really quite loud in there, louder than those _blasted_ music nights...), _though he hadn't the faintest idea why. Blurry images swam through his brain, muddling together until he couldn't make sense of much anything anymore...

"_Wha, went- where, which one were- who was... but, huh...? "_

This pain steadily grew stronger as other injuries made themselves known to the addled teen. Zuko's muscles ached immensely, each bruise and cut proclaiming itself quite merrily across his battered skin. While this was happening his mind kept shifting in and out of focus, keeping him dazed until he had regained enough feeling in his hands to sense that he was on a forest floor. This spurred Zuko's scattered thoughts towards a goal, and soon a couple of his fingers began to twitch towards his sheathed broadswords. They lay only just out of reach.

_Aang/Loatyrica POV_

Loatyrica's furry nose was now so close to Sanzyro's, Aang could virtually feel the little puffs of breath blowing on Loa's whiskers.

It was a gesture of closeness, of friendship. Ambient a small one, certainly; but the tiny importance of being so close to your enemy, yet being in no danger was not lost on them.

Aang vaguely recalled listening to one of Bumi's eccentric rants on the many different types of jings, each a simple form of war strategy that can make all the difference on a battlefield. Much of the lesson had been lost on Aang, especially with Kuzon goofing off right next to him; but one bit that had stuck in his mind through the years was the Neutral Jing; a move that is not attacking, but also not defending. Most people choose to ignore this jing because it is mistaken for doing "nothing." But the sly wisdom of that lesson struck a distant chord in Aang's mind; allowing him to recognize this gentle moment of equal trust between the Avatar and the Fire Prince. They weren't attacking, they weren't defending. Just... being neutral.

Aang's musings had gradually lulled him into a false sense of security. So when time and Fate finally decided to catch up with him, it caught Aang quite unprepared for the sudden end to their trust.

In the quiet instant that the two dæmons touched noses, Zuko's amber eyes flew wide open with astonishment and alarm. He reacted against the contact with a single blast of fire aimed all around the area, scorching the air and singeing the tips of the trees around them. Aang cried out in terror and panic; clutching Loatyrica to his fluttering chest and bended a wind that carried them up into the safety of the sprawling canopy trees.

All thought was driven from Aang's mind as he fled toward his friends. He didn't look back in his rush to escape Zuko's blazing wrath, but Loa managed to speak her mind once before shifting into an owl and flying away with bursting strokes.

"_I was wrong... I'm sorry... She- she... I'm so sorry Aang..."_

"_I know Loa... I know."_

**~ Zuko's Ship ~**

He didn't know what to think.

A thousand different emotions were simultaneously swirling through his head, all at once and each thought more confusing than the last. The pounding headache didn't help his situation much, either. Sanzyro had shifted to a ruddy colored Wing Cat and curled beside him in his stately, but lonely cabin bunk.

The Avatar hadn't looked back, not once. He hadn't glanced behind him to see San change to a solemn nightingale and utter a single cry of... dismay? Longing? Zuko didn't know what, and frankly he was glad of her wary silence for the rest of the evening. Even Rhylanor, his Uncle Iroh's Whiskered Great Horned Owl dæmon (with 2 obsidian horns poking out of her tan feathers) was unable to convince a word out of her. In any normal circumstances Zuko secretly welcomed Rhylanor's mellow and wise nature; but that night he was simply too out of it to care. So he stalked up to his room without so much of a backward glance; completely missing his uncle's sad smile on the way by, and slamming the door unnecessarily loud to shock some sense into his aching body.

That proved to be a rather silly mistake on his part. Zuko's ears were still ringing from the din.

Zuko lay there, tired like he wouldn't believe but unable to shut his eyes until Sanzyro crept up to him and softly nuzzled his cheek. He stroked her luxurious fur until it changed to a blazing pattern of auburn and sienna, complete with long, slender off-white wings. San finally curled up beside his head and he watched her little body rise up and down, up and down. Zuko started to nod off with her, glad of the chance to calm down after the shock of today. When Zuko was on the brink of slipping into a dreamless slumber, the last thing he expected was San's last little words echoing in his mind.

"_... Her name's Loatyrica, you know..."_

"_I know, San... I know."_

**~ End ~**

**A/N: **This is a story that's been sitting in my archives FOREVER, and so when I found it I'd thought I'd just go and upload it to see whether it's any good or not. I'm not so sure about the quality of this thing, so feel free to critique me on anything you feel needs to be changed.

Thanks for reading! :)


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